Coinbase files for US single-stock perpetuals; CFTC review pending

Coinbase Derivatives filed on Sept. 18 to list cash-settled perpetual futures contracts tied to individual U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs, the company said. Coinbase Derivatives is a CFTC-designated contract market and is notice-registered with the SEC as a national securities exchange solely for trading security futures products, placing the proposed contracts under joint oversight.

The CFTC docket lists Coinbase's product as "Approval Pending (45)," per the filing, and U.S. customers cannot trade the proposed contracts yet. Coinbase said it intends to list the contracts shortly after Commission approval, subject to any other necessary regulatory clearances.

The lineup

The Wall Street Journal, in a report linked by Coinbase's corporate account, said the company plans roughly 50 to 60 contracts including Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia, with a launch later this year if regulators approve; Coinbase's own announcement put the count above 50. The CFTC filing itself does not enumerate the lineup and uses an Apple contract as the representative specification. The broader suite would reference liquid U.S.-listed equities and ETFs that meet the exchange's listing standards.

Contract structure

Each contract would settle in dollars rather than shares, with no fixed expiration, and trade from 8 p.m. ET Sunday through 5 p.m. ET Friday, for what Coinbase described as 24/5 exposure. Funding payments, regular transfers that keep the contract price close to the underlying, would be paid hourly. The funding rate is calculated from index readings taken every three minutes across premarket, regular, after-hours and overnight sessions, capped at plus or minus 0.10% per hour. Contracts would be centrally cleared by Nodal Clear, and Coinbase's example Apple contract sets size at 0.01 times the Apple index, putting the example notional near $2.25 when Apple trades near $225. Approval would still not confer stock ownership, voting rights or shares.

What came before

The single-stock filing extends the same funding model from Coinbase's existing U.S. cryptocurrency perpetual futures market to individual equities, and follows Coinbase's June launch of four perpetual-style equity-index futures tied to thematic baskets covering AI, defense, U.S.-listed Chinese companies and large Nasdaq-listed technology companies. Coinbase framed the move with the line "Crypto was first, now it's time for stocks."

Other venues have filed for separate single-stock perpetual products in parallel to Coinbase's; the public CFTC docket and Coinbase's announcement do not detail those rivals' specs. No firm CFTC approval or trading date has been set.